–Hello!

– Dear friends, after the first broadcast with Alexei Ilyich, which took place on June 9, we have been receiving and continue to receive your questions addressed to the professor for a long time. In total, there are several hundred of them. It is simply physically impossible to ask Alexei Ilyich all of them, so for today's meeting we have chosen the most relevant ones for many of our viewers.

You can send your questions to the channel's e-mail or transmit them by phone. Perhaps the answers to them will be heard in our future meetings.

Alexei Ilyich, allow me to begin our conversation with a question that is of concern, and even more so, to a significant number of Christians both in our Church and in other Local Churches. This is the problem of globalization and, as one of its aspects, the problem of digital identification of citizens. Somehow it has become habitual to ridicule those who are afraid of barcodes, INN, three sixes – those who consider these phenomena to be the "seal of the Antichrist", but the problem is actually much deeper and more serious. It is clear that the TIN is not the "seal of the Antichrist", but all these are all kinds of chips, GLONASS systems, etc. – small bricks in building a system of control over people. So totalitarian that Stalin could not even dream of it! The GLONASS satellite system, for example, is able to determine the location of a person with an accuracy of up to a meter, and the biochips currently being developed are not only able to control a person, but also to influence his behavior! And this is not the invention of the "Penza recluses", but reality. What the construction of such a system, such an "electronic concentration camp" leads to, in whose power it will be as a result and how it will be used – is described in the revelation of John the Theologian. Why are any conversations on this topic ridiculed, and people are recorded as "sectarians from Orthodoxy"? Is it really not a threat? Is it possible to somehow resist the construction of this anti-Christian system? In general, if possible, in detail, perhaps even in the form of a micro-lecture, please explain to our viewers the Christian attitude to digital identification and electronic control. Is everything so harmless?

– We are now in a chess situation, which is called a stalemate: when the king has nowhere to go. Scientific and technological progress is now developing precisely in the direction that should lead to an absolutely totalitarian regime on a world scale. And it is absolutely impossible to avoid it. Because this is the general principle of development. This, in the final analysis, is the invisible goal towards which our humanity's scientific and technological progress is leading. Therefore, globalization is a natural process. How can it be evaluated from a Christian point of view? Since the logic of scientific and technological development is exactly the same as I have said, there is no doubt about it, there can be only one Christian attitude towards it: a spiritual and moral rejection of all the negative aspects that are associated with this development. You have just pointed to the achievement of technology, when a person can be found anywhere in the world, learn many details, you can listen to everything, you can see everything. Perhaps they will soon come to the point where they will learn to read thoughts... This makes Christians all the more attentive to themselves. What is our task? Do not sin against one's conscience, the one that is filled with God's commandments. I am somewhat surprised by these fears that everyone will know about me. Okay, you should know. And what am I afraid of? In addition, (there is a lot of talk about this now) special agencies have been following people throughout history. Now these observations of special agencies on each citizen have reached very high degrees. Therefore, the question arises: what is better for us? So that we are watched openly and know that our every step is being watched? Or that we don't know it, but our every step would be seen in the same way and our every word would be listened to in the same way? Of course, it is better to know than to do stupid things in ignorance, which I myself will not be happy about later.

I believe that, in the end, we should not be afraid of what will inevitably come, but we should be afraid of death. No, Christians should not be afraid of death – they should remember it and prepare for it. We must apply the same rule to this phenomenon. Yes, there will be globalization, there will be universal control. Under the rule of the Antichrist, everyone will be under complete control – and not only control, but, unfortunately, will also determine our behavior, our way of thinking. Therefore, now more than ever, Christians need to take care of themselves. To take up not the external activity of the church order, but to take up one's soul, to protect one's conscience from unsuitable not only actions, but also thoughts: both in word and deed, to take up one's inner spiritual life. By the way, if Christians now decided to finally live as Christians, then, I think, the very process of globalization could change. Because we know: "Thou art God, working miracles."

–Thank you! Alexei Ilyich, I will not announce the names of the authors of the questions, because those of them that will be asked today in different variations were asked by many of our viewers. One of these questions is: how does God's Providence for a particular person relate to his independent choice? On the one hand, not a single hair will fall from the head, and on the other hand, you keep saying that a person determines many things by his own behavior.

– Yes, this question constantly worries many and everyone. The fact is that the Christian understanding of God can be most accurately expressed in the following way: our God is the Doctor Who loves us more than anyone else in the world, and knows about our condition, about what is useful to us and what is harmful to us, better than all the doctors in the world. But this Doctor has an interesting feature, which, by the way, every doctor should have – He is ready to help us in any way, but only if we turn to Him. That is, He never takes actions that would destroy our freedom. Therefore, God's Providence is fully correlated with our spiritual state, with our freedom, with our aspirations, thoughts, intentions, goals, and depending on this, His action changes (just as the doctor's action is constantly changing in relation to the patient, depending on whether the patient fulfills the doctor's instructions or not. he says, "No, I won't do that." "You need a diet" – he reacts like Gogol's Sobakevich: "I would hang on the aspen tree in front of my window the German who invented this diet!" This is how the will of God relates to the human will). It depends on us to what extent we will follow those instructions of the Doctor, of God, which are called the commandments of God. First, the doctor gives a weak pill. It doesn't help. It gives stronger, it doesn't help either. Even more - it does not help. Then you have to do an operation - you literally put yourself on the brink. This is what God's providence consists in: its action depends on us, and not on God's personal sudden will. In this we know the great love of God and what other religions have never known – the great humility of God, of which it is said in the Apocalypse: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. And whoever reveals it to Me, to him will I also enter," then, accordingly, there will be good for man. This is what a Doctor of love and humility he is! And all of His actions are ultimately conditioned by our freedom.

– We often come to the question of the correlation between God's Providence and freedom: some perceive Providence as a kind of predestination, as a certain scenario of God, already known to Him; Others perceive this "scenario" as a kind of lack of freedom, that is, a person is already inside this scenario – which is why this question is so often asked. Is it correct to understand that Providence is happening here and now? Or is it beyond time and space?

– Providence, if you will, depends on our freedom, on our spiritual state. Every bad thought I have already changes me, already violates the integrity of freedom, already wounds me. And depending on this, God's action also changes. How? I repeat, the best and most accessible image is that God is the Physician, and His action, that is, Providence, is completely conditioned by our condition, the condition of the patient. But we are constantly changing, hurting ourselves, because sin is a wound inflicted on oneself by a person. How important it is to understand this! Otherwise, we understand the commandments as some kind of obstacle to a free life. After all, what is the commandment? God is not a state law, it is love that reveals to us, warns us: "Do not go there, do not do this, you will harm yourself – I do not command you, but warn you." This is the difference between the juridical perception of God's commandments, which, by the way, embraced all of Western Christianity, and the moral understanding of God's relationship to man. Therefore, I repeat once again a fact that sounds strange and paradoxical: God's Providence is conditioned by our freedom. Freedom is not destroyed, but on the contrary, it acts in full force, and thus God's action is coupled with the freedom of man. And this in theology is called synergy – cooperation, doing.

– Alexei Ilyich, we have outlined the actions of God and man. And what is the role of Satan in human life? How does it affect? Under what laws does this happen?

– Anthony the Great wrote very well about this law (there are not so many who are called Great in the Church) – he is a bright, special, strong personality who has reached the highest spiritual level of development, or rather, spiritual purification. He wrote: "When we try to live according to the commandments, then we are united with the Spirit of God, and good happens in our souls. When we act contrary to these commandments, that is, these indications of what is useful for us, then we unite with the tormenting spirits (as he calls the demons of Satan), this process is natural, because like is always combined with like." Oil and water do not combine with water in any way, but water with water is fine. This is the process: Satan acts in man and can influence man only to the extent that we ourselves freely and voluntarily choose what is inherent in him, that is, we choose evil, we commit actions that are contrary to our conscience, even to our reason. We shake hands with him. Satan himself (as all the Holy Fathers say) cannot approach a person until the person himself stretches out his hand to him: "My dear, I like your horns, your tail and your hooves. Let's get drunk together, let's envy, hate," etc. Here, as the Holy Fathers say, it unites with the soul of a person. Then, indeed, the devil can intensify our passions, by virtue of our voluntary consent, and then we suffer even more. This happens when a person does not struggle with passions, does not oppose them internally, does not turn to God for help, envies and burns with this envy. Here Satan will pour not only oil, but also gasoline into the fire.

"In America, there are frozen bodies of people who, during their lifetime, signed contracts with research centers in the hope that they will discover the secret of immortality in the future... What is the attitude of Orthodoxy to this?

– The madness of materialism, atheism. We are looking in the wrong direction. This is nonsense, and nothing more. They want to achieve immortality, and look at what we are spending our lives in now – we are looking for entertainment, we cannot live otherwise, sometimes not knowing what to do with our time without entertainment. We live by passions, often by such intentions, such a state of mind – what is happening in our soul, later it will even be embarrassing to reveal to a person. And that's how we want to live again. Well, a hundred years have passed, a man has been resurrected. There is no soul, only the body. Imagine, now he, who has received immortality, has committed some offense, and he is sentenced to death. A person will not die himself, he was told, but it is possible to kill. And what will happen for this person? What a horror! Man has attained immortality, and now he is being deprived of this immortality. And that atmosphere of life, which is called "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," contains in itself this murder, hatred. Instead of paying attention to the eradication of these passions that lead to death, people look at themselves as an animal, they want the body to live. Do we not understand that the well-being of the body does not at all mean the well-being of life? How many people commit suicide? And not at all because they have nothing to eat. There was a crisis – how many millionaires committed suicide? Why – they had a hundred million, and there were twenty left: "What a horror! How to live now?!"